


Looking Through the Multiverse

by hmweasley



Series: Are You Crazy Enough to Do It Challenge [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fashion & Models, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Alternate Universe - Western, Crack, Dragon Keeper Hermione, Dragons, Gen, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-05-01 04:50:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14512917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hmweasley/pseuds/hmweasley
Summary: One moment, Hermione's eating breakfast in London. The next, she's a dragon keeper in Wales. It doesn't take her long to discover that she's being repeatedly dropped into other realities. Will she be able to figure out what's happening. More importantly, will she make it home?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a challenge on a forum. It's going to be a series of drabbles/one-shots that focus on Hermione in various AUs. They'll all be connected in that canon Hermione is being dropped in these different worlds and can't figure out why. This first one was written for the book title prompt Eldest.

The clock chimed, and Hermione wasn’t at her kitchen table any longer. Even the toast she’d been about to take a bite of was gone from her hand. She glanced around at the wild landscape, each of her senses on high alert.

The sun’s position in the sky hinted that it was morning, just as it had been in London, but she had no idea what magic could have whisked her away from her own home and dropped her in a foreign landscape without her lifting a finger. Her instincts told her this wasn’t good, and her hand dived into the pocket of her robes, her heartbeat calming slightly when her fingers closed around her wand.

Her most important possession, at least, hadn’t disappeared with the toast.

But, she realized as she glanced down, she wasn’t in the same clothes as before. She’d put on her black Ministry robes that morning, yet she found herself in robes of a ghastly shade of green. They were metallic. Hermione had never owned a metallic pair of robes in her life.

She noticed a patch that had been sewn on the left hand side of her chest, and she tugged at the robes until she could read the text that lined the patch.

“Dragon keeper!?”

She hadn’t come face to face with a dragon since breaking out of Gringotts, and she was fine with that. In fact, she’d made it a personal goal to never see a dragon again. If someone wanted to kill her, dropping her amongst dragons was certainly one way to do it, but she didn’t know why they’d have bothered to give her these robes.

“Granger!”

Hermione’s head shot up, finding an older, unfamiliar man watching her.

“Get something on your robes?” he asked in amusement. “Shouldn’t you be used to that by now? Just siphon it off and come on. We still have ten nests to survey.”

He turned and walked away from her. Hermione stared at his back, trying to piece together what was happening to her.

Clearly, this man knew her and believed she worked with him surveying dragon’s nests of all things. A shiver ran down her spine. She still didn’t know what she’d gotten herself into, but it felt creepier in more ways than just being a dragon tamer.

“Granger!”

He hadn’t turned around to see that she wasn’t following, so she jumped at the sudden shout. Hermione hurried after him, hoping his senses were well enough trained that he could save her from any unfriendly visitors. Assuming, of course, that he wasn’t the one trying to kill her.

“Betsy’s brood should be hatching either today or tomorrow. Here’s hoping we get lucky, eh? I don’t fancy coming in at three in the morning like we did for Henrietta this year. Merlin, that was a tough hatching.”

He grew lost in his reminiscing for a minute before he glanced back at Hermione, one eyebrow raised.

“What’s up with you?” he asked. “You’re awfully quiet today. Weren’t you just telling me yesterday that hatchings make the job worth it? You were the only one not falling asleep where you stood at Henrietta’s hatching.”

“Was I?” she asked before she could think, immediately cursing herself for letting her voice shake.

The man gave her another strange look. She wished she knew what his name was, but he didn’t seem eager to provide it.

“‘Course,” he said. “You’ve been like that since you joined, haven’t you? Always enthusiastic about everything. I have to admit—and I’ll never say this again—I like it. You remind me why I got into dragon keeping in the first place. I thought I’d lost interest years ago, but now you’re here getting excited about the babys’ first droppings. It’s refreshing.”

A blush warmed her cheeks. She fiddled with her wand, trying to focus both on the man and any spells that might come in handy if she was forced to face a dragon.

“Uh, thanks.”

She had no way of knowing how far they were from Betsy’s nest, and with each step, her feeling of dread increased. They’d traveled for ten minutes when she heard the call of a dragon, and she nearly tripped over nothing.

There was another peculiar glance from the mysterious dragon keeper, but he didn’t say anything about it.

“Sounds like her eggs might be cracking,” he said lightly, grinning for the first time since he’d found her. “We might be sticking around here awhile. Hope you brought your lunch.”

For the first time, she paid attention to the bag she had slung over one shoulder. It was so light that she’d hardly registered it was there, but she got the feeling it was charmed just like her beaded bag from the war had been. She had no idea if there was a lunch inside it or not, but she nodded for the man’s benefit.

His footsteps grew quicker, and Hermione hurried after him even as her fear tried to weigh her down. She was better off by his side than on her own, she reminded herself. She had a hunch the dragons trusted him. She wasn’t as confident that they would trust her.

He slowed once they were able to see the nest. Hermione’s heart stuttered as she stood with him, half hidden by a thicket of bushes.

She could recognize a Common Welsh Green from the Triwizard Tournament of her fourth year. It circled around its nest in which Hermione could count four eggs, though there might have been more.

Glancing at the landscape, she realized that they very well might have been in Wales, and that knowledge let her breathe a little easier. It wasn’t as far from home as she might have feared. From here, she easily could have apparated back to London, but part of her knew that trying such a thing was a bad idea. There was more off than just her physical location. She had no way of knowing if she had a home in London to apparate to anymore, so she crouched beside the man and prepared to watch the arrival of the baby dragons.

Her fears eased as they stood watching without anything happening to them. The dragon was more preoccupied with her babies than the two apparently familiar humans watching her from a distance. Hermione made herself comfortable and gawked, with the man beside her smiling as if he’d seen her return to normal.

Then, just as the first egg cracked and Betsy began to sing, Hermione’s world dissolved again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: genre - historical fiction

The transition was such a shock that Hermione didn’t have time to hope she’d been dropped back at home. 

It took a split second for her to realize she was in a dress, but it wasn’t a typical dress, flowy and light like those popular in her own world. This one was stiff and suffocating. Scrunching the skirts in her hands and wiggling her body as best she could, she quickly asserted that she was in a corset and petticoats. She’d never worn either of them before, but there was no other explanation for the heaviness of her skirts or the way her insides felt like they were being squashed.

She thanked her lucky stars to have been born in a time period when she wasn’t expected to dress like this every day. She never would have made it.

It took several seconds for her to realize the clothes weren’t her primary problem.

As her awareness widened, she realized there was a book open in her lap. She glanced at the cover and then the pages, but she didn’t find it familiar. Whatever it was, it had fallen out of popularity by her own time. Assuming she was even in the past.

The room she was in was decorated in a tasteful style that hinted at elegance but wasn’t over the top. The lack of a TV struck her almost immediately. Most wizarding households didn’t own them, but everything in this room struck her as Muggle-made.

If being dropped in an entirely new location had been worrisome, being dropped a hundred years in the past was a new level of horror. Hermione’s eyes were wide as she scanned the room for further hints of what she was facing. 

Pictures sitting on the mantel caught her attention, and she stood, brazenly tossing her book aside. The people in the pictures were undoubtedly herself—at least that was proof she looked like herself here—and her parents. She gasped as she took it in. Even her grandparents were in one picture.

Everyone looked exactly the same except for their choices in styling, which were distinctly Victorian. Hermione raised a hand to the back of her head and felt the same hairstyle she could see on herself in the pictures. She was sure she’d seen the same on some portraits at Hogwarts.

Hermione knew others held the Victorian era as idyllic, but she’d never had a particularly strong affinity for it. She enjoyed some Victorian literature, but it wasn’t her favorite period for any of the arts. And she was being shown just how unromantic their fashion sense had been.

She made for the door and promptly tripped over her skirts. Cursing quietly to herself, she hiked the skirt up in her hands, certain that she’d scandalize anyone she happened across.

The hallway the parlor opened to was a short one, and it only took several feet before Hermione could hear voices floating out from the other room. It took several more seconds before she’d ascertained that one of the voices belonged to her father.

“I have made my decision, and you will not convince me otherwise, Faith.”

Hermione mouthed the name ‘Faith’ before the women her father was addressing spoke for herself.

“Be that as it may, I feel it prudent to make it abundantly clear you are making a mistake.”

Hermione gasped before rushing to cover her mouth, sure her cover had been blown, but neither her father nor her aunt gave any indication of having heard her indiscretion. She took several small steps forward, trying to find a way to look into the open crack of the room without being spotted. The aunt Faith of her own time had died when she was small, but many stories had lived on. Hermione longed to hear about them from the woman herself. She had to remind herself that this Faith wouldn’t know them.

“We kept silent when you sent her off to some mysterious school you refused to name,” the woman continued.

Her father tried to speak, but Faith somehow quieted him before she continued.

“I don’t care for your excuses, Porter. That’s not why I’m here. There’s no taking back the years she spent outside of polite society, and I’m not questioning your decision to educate the girl like others have. What I disapprove of is your choice of school.

“When you sent her off, you assured the rest of the family that the decision wouldn’t harm her future, that she’d still be able to find a respectable husband. Now you want to marry her off to some man with an unrecognizable family name who can’t explain to you how his family makes its money?”

Her father let out a loud enough sigh that even in the hallway Hermione could hear it. She took another step forward, tempted to reach out and touch the door to steady herself.

The school they spoke of must have been Hogwarts. Perhaps she was a witch in this world just as she had been the last. She felt at her skirts for a concealed wand and discovered, to her surprise, that her dress contained a pocket. Her wand had been hiding in the folds of her skirts the whole time. She closed her hand around it, keeping it hidden, and felt joy to realize that there was no difference between this wand and her real wand back in modern London.

“Nothing points to him being an unrespectable man,” her father said. “He has been most sensitive about the subject, and I can tell that he will take good care of her.”

“All the way off in Devon,” Aunt Faith replied as if Devon were one stop away from Hades’ realm.

“As much as I’d love to have her close by, Devon is not so far that we’d never see her again, and perhaps she has grown fond of the simpler life provided by the country while away at school.”

They must have been in London then. She glanced around her but couldn’t find a window to confirm her suspicions. She wasn’t sure that this London would be recognizable to her anyway.

Faith’s scoff told them what she thought about escaping the city for the countryside.

Motion on Hermione’s left startled her. Her hand shot into her pocket, gripping her wand, before she took in the friendly, smiling face of a woman dressed in a maid’s uniform. She swallowed down the awkwardness of having servants and tried to smile back. The woman made no comment about having found her spying on her father and aunt as she sweeped past her and swung the door open.

“Mr. Weasley is here, sir.”

Hermione could now see her family easily, and the mention of Ron’s last name made her aunt scowl. Hermione, however, couldn’t control the bright smile that erupted across her face. She had ascertained, of course, that the man they spoke of must have been one she met while at Hogwarts, but she wouldn’t have dared hope for the good luck of it being Ron.

At least, if she remained stuck in this world, she hadn’t found herself in the midst of an engagement to a man she’d never met.

She caught her father’s eye and found him smiling gently at her. It only made her smile wider.

He turned to her aunt, his face turning stern.

“All I’ve asked is that you meet with the man before you become obstinate in your objections.”

Aunt Faith narrowed her eyes but gave her older brother a short nod.

That was all the encouragement he needed to sweep out of the room, patting Hermione on the arm as he went. Hermione followed him, resisting the urge to hike up her skirts.

She could hardly hear her aunt’s footsteps behind her, but she was sure the woman was there. Her hands shook as if it really were crucial that her aunt come to approve of Ron.

They wound up back in the parlor Hermione had originally found herself in. Ron was sitting in the same chair she had occupied, but he stood when they entered the room. Hermione could easily detect his nerves, from the way he swallowed to the way he kept adjusting his posture.

Even without much knowledge of Victorian style, Hermione could tell Ron’s choices didn’t quite align with her father’s. She hoped her aunt bought that this was due to Devon and not the fact that this man, just as the one she loved in her own world, was more accustomed to robes than to suits.

When Ron’s eyes moved past her father to her, his shoulders relaxed, and his smile mirrored hers. Sadly, it fell again when he saw her aunt. Hermione glanced over her shoulder to see her aunt’s scowl for herself. She took a step forward, wanting to reach out to Ron in comfort but feeling unsure of what was and wasn’t acceptable here. She doubted that showing her aunt something scandalous would help Ron’s case.

As it turned out, she didn’t need to make a decision. The world shifted once again, and the parlor disappeared along with her family and Ron.


	3. The Letter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written for the random prompt "I can't be who you want me to be." I'll be honest, this isn't my favorite one.

Hermione remained frozen as she analyzed her new surroundings. The room she was in looked exactly like her own living room back in her London, and that made her pause more than any unfamiliar house would have after her adventurous morning.

Her eyes roved over the room looking for any hints she could find that this wasn’t the world she knew, and she quickly found them. 

Moving towards the large bookshelf that took up one wall, she noticed the pictures that decorated it were different. There were fewer of them even though she recognized many of the ones that were there. 

Every picture that had depicted Ron was gone.

The realization startled her, and she had an uneasy feeling in her stomach as she tried to sort out what that meant. Had she been flung into a world where Ron didn’t exist but that was otherwise the same? Or was he just not a part of her life here?

The latter would be easier to take—they might have still stood a chance together if she could make things right—but she had no evidence that it was the case.

In a couple of minutes, Hermione completed a cursory search of the flat and was confident she was alone.

She began chewing on her lip as she debated her next course of action. It was the first time she’d been dropped somewhere entirely alone, which gave her freedom that she didn’t know what to do with. 

If she was to be picked up and dropped somewhere new soon, leaving the flat and trying to find someone wasn’t worth the hassle. Especially when she had no idea what she would be stumbling into. Trying to apparate or use the Floo only to discover a place didn’t exist could be painful as much as useless.

Her eyes landed on her desk, which sat against a wall in the living room adjacent to her bookshelf. Just like her real desk, it was littered with so many items that it was hard to sort out what was there. Hermione, feeling strangely drawn towards it, approached.

Many of the items on the desk weren’t of interest, though one book on magical law hinted she might be working in the same Ministry department in this universe as she was in her own. (And looked like a book she’d like to search for in her own universe if she got back to it.)

She didn’t find the letter until after she had been organizing the desk for a few minutes.

Ron’s handwriting was as messy here as in her universe. Seeing it made her heart jump in her chest, and she held her breath as she unfolded the parchment, eyes scanning the paper for answers.

As she got further in the letter, her breathing grew shallow. She laid the parchment on the table, wondering why her alternate self hadn’t bothered burning it yet.

It was a break up letter, and one she’d never expected to read. She couldn’t believe that Ron, even an alternate Ron, had acted so low as to break up with her through a letter. If her own Ron had done that, she never would have stood for it, and she wondered if her alternate self had gone to him and demanded that he say what he wanted to her face after she’d read this.

If one evaluated the letter purely on its literary merit, it came up lacking, but that wasn’t a strike against Ron’s ability to string together a sentence. No, the problem was that it was so vague that Hermione was left wondering why this world’s Ron had broken up with her in the first place.

She had a feeling much was being left unsaid, things she didn’t have a hope of understanding without the knowledge of this universe’s Hermione.

The confusion the letter created made her more angry. In the strictest sense, this hadn’t been her relationship, meaning she had no right to get involved, but it was hard to resist the urge she felt to track Ron down and demand answers.

All the letter contained was vague platitudes one expected to hear during a break up, as if Ron had followed one of those For Dummies books her uncle had been carrying around the last time she’d seen him. Her questions remained unanswered.

She was still trying to decide what to do when the world disappeared around her once more.


	4. Supermodel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt:  
> Supermodel AU

Hermione kept her eyes closed for several long moments once her surrounding felt solid once more. There was a dull roar around her they hinted she was surrounded by people who were all speaking, but no one seemed to be speaking to her.

She opened her eyes, and her stomach fell to the floor. 

A mirror sat opposite her, and the face looking back at her was not her own. She leaned forward, trying to connect with this stranger the same way she did herself, and she began to detect the subtle hints that this was her body, albeit with a multitude of changes.

She couldn’t figure out if the changes were Muggle or magical in nature, but she pushed those worries to the side quickly. It didn’t fundamentally matter.

As she leaned forward, she became certain that her cheekbones were different than they’d used to be, and she wasn’t sure that Muggles could do that, though she also had no idea what anyone was capable of in the world she found herself in.

Her appearance had captivated her so thoroughly that several minutes passed before she had any awareness of her surroundings.

Though she had never followed fashion, the room she was in was recognizable to her as some sort of dressing room for a fashion show.

There were various men and women, all as gorgeous as her new body, moving around. Many of them were in states of undress as they switched between outfits.

No one was paying Hermione any attention, so she continued to sit in her chair in front of the mirror. She had no more desire to look at herself, so she watched everyone else instead, wishing there was someone who looked at ease enough that she could ask them some simple questions.

No one was at ease though. She’d found herself in a room that held more tension than the Ministry of Magic.

There was far more makeup open in front of her than Hermione had ever seen at once, but she already had a full face of it. She didn’t think it would have been possible to add more product.

“Hermione!”

She jumped before glancing over her shoulder at a tall woman with dark skin.

“What are you doing?” the woman demanded. “You’re meant to be on the runway in less than a minute.”

Without waiting for an answer, she shooed Hermione out of her chair and towards the dressing room exit. Hermione went without a fight, panic rising in her chest. She had no idea how any version of herself had found herself as a model because she had no idea how to pull of the outlandish outfit she was wearing in front of a crowd of people.

The unnamed woman deposited her in line, where the other models were too focused on their own impending performances to say much of anything to her. She was thankful for it as she was beginning to feel like she might vomit. Strangely enough, this didn’t seem to catch anyone’s attention, and Hermione wondered if her stage fright was a regular thing even though she did this for a living here. She could easily imagine that being the case.

When it was her turn to take the runway, she had no choice but to wing it. She put all her effort into strutting like she’d watched the models before her do, but she refused to look at the audience to see whether they were buying it or not.

She merely focused on putting one foot in front of the other until the whole world dissolved once more.


	5. Philosophy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: philosophy

Hermione’s new surroundings were as different from her previous ones as they could be. She was in a small room piled high with books. Every inch of wall space was lined with bookshelves except for the space that had been left for the fireplace. A fire crackled in the grate, emitting warmth along with its dim orange light.

She found herself sitting at a long table littered with books, some in stacks and some lying open to certain well-worn pages. A scroll of parchment was partially unrolled in front of her, with her own handwriting scrawled across it. Some lines had been hastily scribbled out as if she’d thought better of them. Even the books had notes in their margins that were in her own hand, hinting that this wasn’t a library she occupied.

It felt familiar, yet it didn’t. The table in front of her was in a state much like her desk back home, but in London, she didn’t have a room dedicated entirely to books like this one. There wasn’t room for it in her small London flat, though she held out hope that she’d achieve it some day.

Taking a closer look at what this alternate version of herself had been writing, Hermione found herself in the middle of a philosophical argument of her own creation. It was a far cry from anything her real self had written before, and without the beginning of the treatise, she wasn’t sure what the exact point she was trying to make was.

She wondered what this version of herself did for a living that she had time to write something such as this.

Though Hermione loved books and had her own admired philosopher or two, she’d never had enough passion for the discipline to actively seek out knowledge about it, especially when it came to wizarding philosophers.

Deciding there was nothing better to do, she picked up one of the books lying closest to her and took to reading about the theories of magic that some ancient woman had thought up and that must have still held some water in this Hermione’s time, since she had chosen to liberally annotate the book.

It was fascinating, and Hermione found herself adding it to her mental “to read” list, hoping she could remember the title if she managed to make it back home.

The book made her have thoughts of her own, and though she couldn’t know everything the alternate her had written already, she found herself scribbling down notes that might confuse or inspire her alternate self once they regained control of their body.

At least, she hoped they would regain control, that the alternate versions of herself got their lives back to normal once she was gone. She hated the thought that she might be ruining their lives. Her supermodel self might suffer a career blow from Hermione’s own pathetic attempts at walking a runway.

Laying down her quill, she let her mind wander, trying to piece together how this could be happening to her. Perhaps it was nothing more than an elaborate hallucination brought on by a potion or hex. There was no doubting that she had a few enemies, and it was possible that one of them had chosen this method for attacking her.

Before she could come to a satisfactory explanation, the world transformed again


	6. Desperadoes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermione finds herself in the Old West

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually hate Westerns, and it probably shows in this. Also, warning for gun shots that happen off screen but are heard by the characters.
> 
> Prompts:  
> (book title) desperado

Hermione couldn’t help but cringe when her surroundings came back into focus. It was easy to gather that she was in an Old West saloon. A glance down at the dress she was wearing seemed to confirm as much.

Looking around, she noticed that she was the only woman in the place. That left her uneasy, but the real fear didn’t begin until she noticed one of the men several tables away watching her intently. Hermione dropped her gaze to the table, determined not to make eye contact. She wasn’t sure what else she could do when she had no idea what was outside of the saloon.

A hand grasped her shoulder, and Hermione jumped.

“Sorry! Sorry!”

It was Ron. Hermione took several deep breaths as her heart calmed. She was so relieved to see him in this world that it took all of her willpower not to throw her arms around him.

Once he was sure she was okay, he set his eyes on the creepy man, who was no longer looking in their direction.

“Let’s go,” he suggested, casting his eyes over the other patrons for good measure.

Hermione stood readily, following him out of the saloon without complaint.

* * *

The town outside confirmed that they were in fact in the Old West, and it appeared old even if, in this universe, it wasn’t. What few buildings lined the dirt street were flimsily constructed and dusty. 

There weren’t many people around, but the few walking down the street were men. Hermione had never felt so isolated as a woman in her life.

She stayed close to Ron’s side, her hand in the crook of his elbow. She’d discovered the wedding ring on her finger, and it gave her comfort is in such a strange situation.

Ron was just as anxious as she was, gaze constantly flickering around the other men. She could feel the taunt muscles of his arm in his anxiety.

“I don’t like it here,” Hermione chanced saying, watching his face closely for signs.

“I don’t either,” he said with a sigh. “I knew it was a long way to California, but I underestimated how many of these towns we’d pass through before we got there.”

That eased some of her anxiety. At least they were merely passing through. When she left, this version of her wouldn’t be stuck here. Though she didn’t know enough about the time period or California to know what she was heading towards.

She wanted to know why they were going to California, but this universe’s real her would know the answer to that question.

Suddenly, gun shots sounded through the air, making her and Ron jump a mile high. Ron began tugging on her arm to hurry her along, his head swinging in every direction.

“Desperadoes,” he muttered. “More of them. How many can there be?”

Part of Hermione was curious, but she followed after Ron anyway, trying to stay calm as the gunfire intensified. 

Her surroundings were disappearing before they’d made it to their lodgings.


End file.
